IT stocks lead the gains

Mon, 14 Jun 09:30 am

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The Indian markets have started today's session on a positive note, led by stocks from the IT and oil & gas sectors. The benchmark indices opened at the breakeven mark but soon surged into the green. They have managed to hold on to their gains since then. Other key Asian markets are also in the green with Japan (up 1.6%) leading the pack of gainers. The US markets closed higher by 0.4% last Friday.

The BSE-Sensex is trading higher by around 170 points, while the NSE-Nifty is up by about 40 points. Buying interest is also being witnessed among mid and small cap stocks as the BSE-Midcap and BSE-Smallcap indices are trading higher by 0.8% and 0.7% respectively. The rupee is trading at 46.83 to the US dollar.

Telecom stocks have opened the day on a positive note. Gainers here include Reliance Communications and MTNL. As per a leading business daily, Reliance Industries' total investment in telecom, including the acquisition of 95% of Infotel Broadband, is likely to come to around Rs 220 bn. The initial capital expenditure on physical infrastructure for rolling out broadband services will be over Rs 45 bn. It will also pay Rs 129 bn to the government as license fee for spectrum bagged by Infotel, which will now become a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. Interestingly, the company is open to sharing infrastructure with Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications. The possible partnership will be based on two main areas of infrastructure sharing in the form of fibre optic cables and towers to save costs and time. Reliance Communications has close to 50,000 towers, around 190,000 kms of fibre optic connecting over 1 m buildings across 44 cities with over 1.4 m access lines, and 9 data centres. With such telecom infrastructure, it will be much that much easier for Reliance Industries to offer IPTV or fixed broadband phones.

FMCG stocks have opened the day on a positive note. Gainers here include Marico and HUL. As per a leading business daily, Godrej Consumer is more or less done with global acquisitions and is unlikely to make any major acquisition in the next two years. In fact, the company is likely to wind up its FMCG portfolio cell, which was created especially to pursue inorganic growth strategies. It may be noted that the group has doubled its FMCG turnover to over Rs 40 bn in the last two years. So far this year, it has made four overseas acquisitions, which include Tura in Nigeria, Megasari in Indonesia and Issue group and Argencos in Argentina. Now, it has set the objective of doubling the FMCG turnover to around Rs 80 bn in three years for which it is likely to focus on consolidating its acquisitions